Was It Scrap Metal or an Alien Spacecraft? The Army Asked an Elite Defense Lab to Investigate
这是报废金属还是外星飞船？军方请求精英国防实验室进行调查

The comment was made half jokingly, but for one company, Lockheed Martin, the answer was…complicated. 
这条评论半开玩笑，但对于洛克希德·马丁公司来说，答案却是……复杂的。

Lockheed’s Skunk Works lab—a legendary facility known for its work on some of the country’s most secret projects—had, in fact, just tested, and attempted to replicate, a piece of metal that was said to have been gathered from a crashed UFO outside Roswell, N.M. The U.S. Army wanted to know whether it could use the material to build vehicles that bend the conventional rules of gravity.
洛克希德的臭鼬工厂实验室——一个以研究该国最机密项目而闻名的传奇设施——实际上刚刚测试并试图复制一块据称是从新墨西哥州罗斯韦尔坠毁的不明飞行物附近收集的金属。美国陆军想知道是否可以使用这种材料制造可以突破传统重力规则的车辆。

Spoiler alert: The idea didn’t fly. But the untold story behind the ersatz space metal turned out to be almost as strange as UFO fiction. The metal went on a three-decade journey from a fringe legend fed by a late-night radio personality to the hands of a 1990s-era rock star to the elite testing lab of a top defense contractor. 
剧透一下：这个想法并没有成功。但是这块冒牌太空金属背后未曾讲述的故事几乎和科幻小说一样奇怪。这块金属经历了长达三十年的旅程，从深夜广播节目主持人编造的边缘传奇，到 1990 年代的摇滚明星手中，再到顶级国防承包商的精英测试实验室。

It was just one of a series of episodes Kirkpatrick’s team dug into as it investigated claims that Washington was hiding what it knew about a secret program to reverse-engineer fallen extraterrestrial spacecraft. 
这只是柯克帕特里克团队深入调查华盛顿是否隐藏了关于反向工程坠毁的外星飞船的秘密计划的众多案例之一。

Along the way, Kirkpatrick’s investigation brought him into contact with a growing collection of UFO true believers from the Pentagon. They included men whose careers had taken them to unconventional places in the outer reaches of the American intelligence community, where they explored the potential uses of psychic powers and teleportation in warfare—not to mention werewolves. Alleged evidence to support the whistleblowers’ theories appeared to vanish just as Kirkpatrick got close to it.
在调查过程中，柯克帕特里克与来自五角大楼的一群不断增长的不明飞行物真相信徒接触。他们包括一些职业生涯将他们带到美国情报界非常规领域的人，在那里他们探索战争中超能力和心灵传输的潜在用途——更不用说狼人了。貌似支持吹哨者理论的证据，在柯克帕特里克接近的瞬间就仿佛消失了。

Sean Kirkpatrick, who retired as head of a Pentagon team looking into UFO reports, keeps a 3D printed model of a purported piece of space metal that turned out to be something entirely different.
肖恩·柯克帕特里克，曾担任五角大楼不明飞行物报告调查小组负责人，现在保留着一个 3D 打印模型，这是一件据称的太空金属，但最终证明是完全不同的东西。Angela Owens/WSJ   安吉拉·欧文斯/华尔街日报

By the time Kirkpatrick’s inquiry wrapped up—culminating in a report last year by the Defense Department that found allegations of a government coverup to be baseless—his witnesses saw him, too, as part of the vast UFO coverup.
当柯克帕特里克的调查结束时——culminating 在国防部去年的一份报告中，认定政府掩盖的指控毫无根据——他的证人也将他视为广泛的不明飞行物掩盖阴谋的一部分。

In a statement, Pentagon spokeswoman Sue Gough, said the investigation “has not discovered any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently” and “determined that claims involving specific people, known locations, technological tests, and documents” that say otherwise “are inaccurate.”  
五角大楼发言人苏·格夫在一份声明中表示，调查"没有发现任何可验证的信息来证实存在过或目前存在任何关于拥有或逆向工程外星材料的项目"，并且"确定了关于特定人员、已知地点、技术测试和文件的说法"是"不准确的"。

This account is based on interviews with two dozen current and former U.S. officials, scientists, and military contractors involved in the inquiry as well as thousands of pages of documents, emails, text messages and recordings.
这篇报道基于对二十多位参与调查的现任和前任美国官员、科学家和军事承包商的采访，以及数千页文件、电子邮件、短信和录音。

Art’s parts  阿特的零件

In 1996, Art Bell, a late-night radio host whose program on the paranormal was one of the most popular in the country, received a mystery package in the mail. It contained metal fragments from an anonymous listener who wrote that their grandfather had collected them as part of a military crash-retrieval team at Roswell.
1996 年，阿特·贝尔，一位深夜 paranormal（超自然现象）广播节目主持人，节目是全国最受欢迎的节目之一，收到了一个神秘的邮包。包裹中有一位匿名听众寄来的金属碎片，听众写道，这些碎片是他的祖父在罗斯韦尔作为军事坠毁回收小组成员收集的。

Roswell had long been a touchstone of UFO culture. In 1947, the Army announced it had recovered the remnants of a flying disc near a base there. Although the government eventually revealed it was really a U.S. spy balloon, there was no convincing many UFO buffs that the military wasn’t harboring alien technology.  
罗斯韦尔长期以来一直是不明飞行物文化的一个标志性地点。1947 年，美国陆军宣布在那里的一个基地附近回收了飞行器残骸。尽管政府最终透露这实际上是一个美国间谍气球，但仍无法说服许多不明飞行物爱好者相信军方没有隐藏外星技术。

“They are metal, they are charred, very charred, on the outside, either a result of re-entry or entry into the atmosphere, and the resulting heat, or a crash. I would have no way of knowing,” Bell said on the show, before moving on to discuss sightings of a mythical creature known as the chupacabra, which is said to suck the blood of goats.
"它们是金属的，外表非常焦黑，可能是由于再入大气层或进入大气层所产生的热量，或是坠毁造成的。我无法确定，"贝尔在节目中说道，随后开始讨论一种被称为吸血羊怪（chupacabra）的神话生物，据说它会吸食山羊的血液。

More than a decade later, two scientists who had worked with the Pentagon helped run a research program examining the possibilities of alien technology and explored “metamaterials,” a type of synthetic substance. The program published research speculating that metamaterials could bestow aircraft with exotic powers such as invisibility.
十多年后，曾与五角大楼合作的两位科学家帮助运行了一个研究项目，该项目探索外星技术的可能性，并研究"超材料"这种合成物质。该项目发表的研究推测，超材料可能赋予飞行器诸如隐形等特殊能力。

Could the Bell sample be proof of the concept? 
Bell 样品是否可以成为概念的证明？

A group founded by Tom DeLonge, a frontman for the pop-punk band Blink-182, thought so. The group, called To The Stars, bought the pieces of metal from a UFO researcher in 2019 for $35,000 to test that possibility.
由 Blink-182 乐队主唱 Tom DeLonge 创立的一个组织认为是这样。这个名为"致星辰"（To The Stars）的组织在 2019 年以 35,000 美元从一位 UFO 研究者手中购买了这些金属碎片，以测试这种可能性。

By then, To The Stars had assembled a collection of heavyweights including the two scientists and a former Pentagon official. The former official, Luis Elizondo, joined after quitting the Defense Department and going public with the claim that he had helped run a government UFO program. 
到那时，"致星辰"已经集结了一批重量级成员，包括两位科学家和一位前五角大楼官员。这位前官员 Luis Elizondo 在辞去国防部工作并公开声称他曾帮助运行一个政府 UFO 项目后加入了该组织。

One of the scientists, Hal Puthoff, became vice president for the group. The other, Eric Davis, who also became an adviser to the group, told the New York Times in 2020 that testing of the sample had revealed it was not of this Earth. “We couldn’t make it ourselves,” he told the Times. 
科学家之一 Hal Puthoff 成为该组织的副总裁。另一位科学家 Eric Davis 也成为该组织的顾问，他在 2020 年接受纽约时报采访时表示，对样品的测试显示它并非来自地球。"我们无法自己制造这种东西，"他对《纽约时报》说。

To The Stars made the case to the Army that replicating this material could unlock futuristic weapons systems. The Army soon signed an agreement to test the metal for potential antigravity and cloaking properties.
To The Stars 向陆军提出，复制这种材料可能会解锁未来的武器系统。陆军很快签署了一份协议，以测试这种金属的潜在反重力和隐身特性。

Space lasers  太空激光

It turned out Davis, an astrophysicist, was a source of many of Kirkpatrick’s witness accounts. Davis was a storied character in UFO lore and had spent more than 20 years investigating ideas for the military most would consider unfathomable, including teleportation, antigravity devices and the possibility of interstellar space travel using wormholes.  
事实证明，戴维斯是一位天体物理学家，也是柯克帕特里克许多证人证词的来源。戴维斯是 UFO 传说中的一个传奇人物，曾花了 20 多年研究军方大多数人认为不可想象的想法，包括传送、反重力装置，以及使用虫洞进行星际空间旅行的可能性。

For years, Davis, now 64, was part of a small group of defense experts who had claimed to know about a top-secret program at Lockheed’s Skunk Works to hoard extraterrestrial technology that might one day be converted into fearsome weapons. Their claims gained credence in part because of the siloed nature of the U.S. national security establishment, which can make it almost impossible even for insiders to determine the truth of some of the country’s most secret programs. 
多年来，现年 64 岁的戴维斯是一个小群体的成员，这个群体的国防专家声称知道洛克希德公司"臭鼬工厂"的一个绝密项目，该项目囤积可能某天转化为可怕武器的外星技术。他们的说法获得了一定的可信度，部分原因是美国国家安全机构的封闭性，这种封闭性使得即使内部人士也几乎无法确定一些最机密项目的真相。

When Davis went to talk to Kirkpatrick, he said he knew both about a U.S. alien program and a similar one by Moscow. Central Intelligence Agency officials in the late 2000s had asked him to look into a crashed UFO decades earlier in Russia, he told Kirkpatrick’s team. In Davis’s telling, Moscow was said to be reverse-engineering a laser system harvested from the vessel, one that could threaten U.S. space assets. 
戴维斯在与柯克帕特里克交谈时说，他了解美国的外星人项目和莫斯科的类似项目。他告诉柯克帕特里克的团队，中央情报局官员在 2000 年代末曾要求他调查几十年前在俄罗斯坠毁的不明飞行物。据戴维斯所说，莫斯科据称正在对从该飞船上收集的激光系统进行逆向工程，这可能威胁美国的太空资产。

The CIA told Kirkpatrick’s team that it had no record of Davis being tasked with any such assignment. But investigators came across another startling tidbit: The information Davis had was of a real, covert Russian laser program. Kirkpatrick’s team determined the UFO part of the story was likely Russian misinformation designed to throw America off the trail—not unlike the Air Force’s own myths about Area 51.
中央情报局告诉柯克帕特里克的团队，他们没有关于戴维斯执行此类任务的任何记录。但调查人员发现了另一个令人震惊的细节：戴维斯掌握的信息涉及一个真实的、秘密的俄罗斯激光项目。柯克帕特里克的团队认定，这个不明飞行物的故事很可能是俄罗斯为了转移美国注意力而设计的虚假信息——这与空军关于 51 区的神话并无二致。

A scene from the 'Extraterrestrial Highway' in Nevada.
内华达州"外星人高速公路"上的一幕景象。Mikayla Whitmore for WSJ
米卡拉·惠特摩尔（MIKAYLA WHITMORE）为华尔街日报拍摄

The Arlington Institute  阿灵顿研究所

Puthoff, who also had a long history with exotic U.S. programs—creating one for the CIA in the 1970s to deploy psychic spies against the Soviet Union—told Kirkpatrick’s team of another mysterious incident that had fueled UFO belief. 
普托夫还长期参与过美国的一些特殊项目，包括在 1970 年代为中央情报局设计一个针对苏联的超能间谍项目。他向柯克帕特里克的团队讲述了另一起曾助长不明飞行物信仰的神秘事件。

He said he had been invited to a 2004 panel in Arlington, Va., the type the government often quietly funds through think tanks to field new ideas. This one, Puthoff said he was told, was sponsored by the White House and given a very specific prompt: Help the president decide whether or not he should finally disclose the existence of a crash-retrieval program, and assess the possible upheaval the revelation would ignite. What would be the effect on the stock market? On religion? Would aerospace companies sue the government into bankruptcy when they learned their rivals had decades ago been given access to alien technology? 
他说，他曾受邀参加 2004 年在弗吉尼亚州阿灵顿举行的一个小组会议，这类会议通常由智库悄悄资助以探讨新想法。普托夫表示，据他所知，这次会议是由白宫赞助，并设有非常具体的议题：帮助总统决定是否最终公开坠毁回收项目的存在，并评估可能引发的动荡。这种披露会对股市产生什么影响？对宗教会有什么影响？当航空航天公司得知他们的竞争对手早已获得外星技术准入权时，会否会起诉政府至破产？

“We added up all the numbers and we said, ‘no way,’ we can’t handle disclosure,” Puthoff said in an interview. Kirkpatrick’s team investigated whether the White House really sponsored such an event. The chief executive of the think tank that hosted the discussion, John Petersen, told Kirkpatrick a former senior Pentagon space official had notified him that President George W. Bush was preparing to make public all the secrets held by the government about aliens.
"我们把所有数字加起来，然后说，'不可能'，我们无法处理这种披露，"普托夫在采访中说。柯克帕特里克的团队调查了白宫是否真的赞助了这样的活动。主办讨论会的智库负责人约翰·彼得森告诉柯克帕特里克，一位前高级五角大楼航天官员通知他，乔治·W·布什总统正准备公开政府关于外星人的所有秘密。

“I was told that it was real, that it was happening,” Petersen said in an interview. But months later, when Petersen asked the former official about the monumental truth about to be revealed, the reply was, “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.” 
我被告知这是真实的，正在发生，"彼得森在采访中说。但几个月后，当彼得森询问这位前官员即将揭示的重大真相时，对方回复："我甚至不知道你在说什么。

Bush’s chief of staff from that time told Kirkpatrick he didn’t know about the panel or any such plan to disclose alien secrets. Both Kirkpatrick and Petersen ended up with the only explanation they could think of: Arlington Institute and the panelists had been tricked. For what reason remains a mystery. 
布什当时的幕僚长告诉柯克帕特里克，他不知道这个小组或任何关于披露外星人秘密的计划。柯克帕特里克和彼得森最终得出了他们能想到的唯一解释：阿灵顿研究所和小组成员已经被欺骗了。出于什么原因仍然是个谜。

Security was tight at the entrance to Area 51 in 2019, as tourists responded to a call to 'storm' the secretive site.
2019 年，面对游客要"突袭"这个神秘基地的号召，第 51 区入口处的安全戒备非常严密。Jim Urquhart/Reuters  吉姆·厄尔卡特/路透社

The safe  保险箱

The former Pentagon official who had joined To The Stars, Elizondo, also had experience with some of the Pentagon’s stranger programs.  
这位曾加入"通往群星"组织的前五角大楼官员埃利扎多，同时也熟悉五角大楼一些较为奇特的项目。

The combat veteran and counterintelligence specialist had been involved in one $22 million project, championed by the late Sen. Harry Reid, which hypothesized about technology that might be used by aliens. The program also investigated purported sightings of glowing orbs, interdimensional visitors, and two-legged wolf creatures that were allegedly occurring around a remote ranch in northeastern Utah. In 2017, he quit the Defense Department and said in a resignation letter that “inflexible mindsets” were causing the Pentagon to possibly ignore “an existential threat to our national security.” 
这位作战经验丰富的反情报专家曾参与过一个价值 2200 万美元的项目，该项目由已故参议员哈里·里德大力推动，旨在探索可能被外星人使用的技术。该项目还调查了声称在犹他州东北部一个偏远牧场周围出现的发光球体、跨维度访客和两条腿的狼人生物。2017 年，他辞去国防部工作，并在辞职信中表示，"固执的思维模式"可能导致五角大楼忽视了"对我们国家安全构成的存在性威胁"。

It was Elizondo who provided one of Kirkpatrick’s most tantalizing leads. Tattooed and buff like the bouncer he once was at a Miami sports bar, Elizondo told Kirkpatrick he was prepared to share with him what he knew of a secret government program that had collected extraterrestrial ”biologics.” He said he had hard evidence of the UFO findings he had collected for the Pentagon—information he had declined to make public citing national security.
正是埃利孙多提供了柯克帕特里克最诱人的线索。这位曾在迈阿密体育酒吧当过保安、纹着身体且肌肉结实的埃利孙多告诉柯克帕特里克，他准备与他分享关于一个收集外星"生物样本"的秘密政府项目的情况。他说他掌握了为五角大楼收集的不明飞行物发现的确凿证据，但出于国家安全考虑，他一直未公开这些信息。

Where can we find out more about this? Kirkpatrick asked.
我们可以从哪里了解更多细节？柯克帕特里克问道。

There’s a safe in my old office that has all of the files on a hard drive, Elizondo replied. A former colleague at the Pentagon had just confirmed a few days ago the device was still there, he said.
在我的旧办公室里有一个保险箱，里面有一个硬盘存储着所有文件，埃利孙多回答。他的一位五角大楼的前同事几天前刚刚确认过该设备仍然在那里，他说。

Hours after hearing of Elizondo’s evidence, agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Air Force’s investigations unit cordoned the office and gathered with a drill to break open the safe. As they approached it, they realized the drawer wasn’t actually locked. When they opened it, they found yet another surprise: It was empty. 
听说了埃利孙多的证据几小时后，联邦调查局特工和空军调查部门的特工封锁了办公室，并带着钻头准备撬开保险箱。当他们靠近时，他们意识到抽屉实际上并没有上锁。当他们打开它时，他们发现了另一个惊喜：箱子是空的。

Former Pentagon official Luis Elizondo was warmly received by fans at the 25th Annual UFO Fest in McMinnville, Ore., where he signed copies of his book 'Imminent: Inside the Pentagon's Hunt for UFOs.'
前五角大楼官员路易斯·埃利孔多在俄勒冈州麦克明维尔的第 25 届不明飞行物节上受到粉丝的热烈欢迎，并在他的著作《迫在眉睫：五角大楼追查不明飞行物内幕》上签名。Jennifer Osborne for WSJ
詹妮弗·奥斯本 FOR WSJ

Kirkpatrick reached out to Elizondo’s onetime boss in the office of the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, who also seemed to have little to share. The official said he had never heard about any alien project in their years of working together.
柯克帕特里克联系了埃利松多曾经的上级，即国防部情报次长办公室的官员，但这位官员似乎也没有太多可分享的信息。该官员表示，在他们共事多年期间，他从未听说过任何有关外星人项目的事。

In the weeks before his October 2017 resignation, Elizondo sent a series of emails that he later used to support his story. 
在 2017 年 10 月辞职前的几周里，埃利佐多发送了一系列电子邮件，他后来用这些邮件来支持自己的陈述。

“I can’t overstate how important I believe this portfolio is with respect to our collective National Security,” Elizondo wrote in one, asking for support for the unidentified project. 
"我无法过分强调我认为这个项目对我们整体国家安全有多么重要，"埃利佐多在一封邮件中写道，并要求支持这个未明确说明的项目。

The former boss responded, “at some point I need to know what this actually ‘is.’” In another, sent 10 days before his departure, Elizondo attached a brief memo that referenced drone threats. The emails were later released by the Pentagon in response to public-records requests.
他的前任上司回复："在某个时候，我需要知道这究竟是什么。"在另一封邮件中，发送于他离职前 10 天，埃利佐多附上了一份简短的备忘录，其中提到了无人机威胁。这些电子邮件后来被五角大楼应公共记录请求而公开。

Elizondo told another supervisor after his resignation that he hadn’t briefed him on the project because it was too secret and was directed by the Secretary of Defense himself.
伊丽山多辞职后告诉另一位主管，他之所以没有通报他，是因为项目太过机密，且直接由国防部长亲自指导。

In an email, Elizondo told the Journal he had informed the supervisor. He said that he sat with investigators for several hours and provided information on the U.S. government historical efforts on unidentified anomalous phenomena.
在一封电子邮件中，伊丽山多告诉《华尔街日报》，他已经告知了该主管。他说他与调查人员坐了几个小时，并提供了美国政府在未识别异常现象方面的历史努力信息。

The Pentagon spokeswoman said Elizondo had no assigned responsibilities for the UFO program he had claimed to have worked on.  
五角大楼的女发言人表示，伊丽山多在他声称工作的不明飞行物项目中没有被分配任何职责。

Bikers gather for a parade during the 2025 UFO Fest in McMinnville, Ore.
在俄勒冈州麦克明维尔，骑行者聚集参加 2025 年不明飞行物节日游行。Jennifer Osborne for WSJ
詹妮弗·奥斯本 FOR WSJ

Meanwhile, Kirkpatrick’s investigators continued on the trail of the metal. They discovered that the Army had sent it for possible replication to Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works—the same place a series of witnesses had said was trying to reverse-engineer alien craft. 
与此同时，柯克帕特里克的调查人员继续追踪这些金属。他们发现，陆军已将这些金属送往洛克希德·马丁公司的天工厂（Skunk Works）进行可能的复制，而一系列证人此前曾表示，该地方正试图对外星飞船进行逆向工程。

The myth that the government had a secret program to exploit extraterrestrial technology seemed to have transformed into something close to reality.
政府有一个秘密计划来利用外星技术的神话似乎已经接近现实。

Kirkpatrick’s team procured the metal, and sent it for another round of testing to Oak Ridge National Laboratory, one of the Energy Department’s premier research facilities. Scientists there determined that the alloy isn’t from outer space and doesn’t have antigravity properties. Kirkpatrick’s team found it was probably from a World War II-era manufacturing test of an aircraft part or an armament, such as a shell casing.
柯克帕特里克的团队获得了这些金属样本，并将其送往能源部旗下的顶级研究机构之一——橡树岭国家实验室进行另一轮测试。那里的科学家确定这种合金并非来自太空，也不具有反引力特性。柯克帕特里克的团队发现，这很可能是二战时期飞机零件或军械（如弹壳）制造测试中的产物。

Lockheed declined to comment and referred questions to the Army.
洛克希德公司拒绝置评，并将问题转交给了陆军。

Football-field-sized craft
足球场大小的飞行器

Kirkpatrick’s relationship with the UFO community soon grew contentious.
柯克帕特里克与不明飞行物（UFO）社区的关系很快变得紧张起来。

In April 2023, Kirkpatrick gave lawmakers a public update: He’d “found no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off-world technology, or objects that defy the known laws of physics.”
2023 年 4 月，柯克帕特里克向议员公开了最新进展：他"迄今未发现任何可靠的外星活动、非地球技术或违背已知物理学定律的物体的证据"。

A few months later, a former Air Force intelligence officer, David Grusch publicly claimed that the government had football-field-sized space craft and criticized Kirkpatrick. “He should be able to make the same investigative discoveries that I did,” Grusch said in a television interview. 
几个月后，一位前空军情报官员大卫·格鲁施公开声称政府拥有相当于足球场大小的太空飞行器，并批评柯克帕特里克。格鲁施在一次电视采访中说："他应该能够做出与我相同的调查发现。"

After the claims, Kirkpatrick reached out to a friend of Grusch to see if he would talk. The friend said Grusch was reluctant because he believed Kirkpatrick himself might be subject to a criminal investigation of the alleged coverup. Instead Grusch went before Congress and the media, accusing the government of retaliating against whistleblowers in the ranks.
在这些指控之后，柯克帕特里克联系了格鲁施的一位朋友，看看他是否愿意交谈。这位朋友表示，格鲁施不愿意，因为他相信柯克帕特里克本人可能会受到关于所谓掩盖的刑事调查。相反，格鲁施向国会和媒体作证，指控政府对内部举报人进行报复。

Grusch has since gone to work as an adviser to Rep. Eric Burlison (R, Mo.), a member of the House caucus on unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP, and in that capacity recently met with Kirkpatrick’s successor on the investigation. 
格鲁施现已作为众议员埃里克·布尔利森（R，密苏里州）的顾问，后者是不明异常现象（UAP）国会小组的成员，并在这一身份中最近与柯克帕特里克调查工作的继任者会面。

David Grusch, a former Pentagon official, arrives for a 2023 House Oversight Committee hearing titled 'Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Implications on National Security, Public Safety, and Government Transparency.'
前任五角大楼官员戴维·格鲁施出席 2023 年众议院监督委员会听证会，听证会主题为"未识别异常现象：对国家安全、公共安全和政府透明度的影响"。Drew Angerer/Getty Images
德鲁·安格勒/盖蒂图片社

Threats against Kirkpatrick began to escalate. Pentagon’s security officials notified him that people were posting the addresses of him and family members on UFO internet forums. Several months earlier, a man had driven hundreds of miles to Kirkpatrick’s rural mountaintop home and waited overnight before being shooed away by neighbors. The Pentagon gave Kirkpatrick a level of security usually reserved for a few top officials, including the Secretary of Defense. 
针对柯克帕特里克的威胁开始升级。五角大楼的安全官员通知他，有人在 UFO 网络论坛上发布了他和家人成员的地址。几个月前，一名男子开车数百英里来到柯克帕特里克位于山顶的乡间住宅，在那里等待了一整夜，最后被邻居赶走。五角大楼为柯克帕特里克提供了通常仅为少数顶级官员（包括国防部长）预留的安全级别。

In November 2023, Kirkpatrick announced his retirement. In an essay in the Scientific American two months later, he wrote that the narrative provided by the former officials “is a textbook example of circular reporting, with each person relaying what they heard, but the information often ultimately being sourced to the same small group of individuals.”
2023 年 11 月，柯克帕特里克宣布退休。两个月后，他在《科学美国人》杂志的一篇文章中写道，前官员提供的叙述"是循环报道的教科书式案例，每个人都转述他们听到的内容，但信息最终往往源自同一小群个人"。

The next day, Elizondo wrote in an apparent veiled reference to Kirkpatrick on social media: “I left my job in protest, others leave in shame.”
第二天，埃利藏多在社交媒体上用明显暗示柯克帕特里克的语气写道："我以抗议辞职，而其他人则是灰溜溜地离开。"

Privately Elizondo texted Kirkpatrick a series of messages, raising the prospect of legal action and accusing the scientist’s office of colluding with a New York Post reporter, Steven Greenstreet, who had written critically about the former officials with UFO claims. “People are getting fired up,” he wrote. “If this gets to DoD or Congress your reputation will be absolute trash.”
私下里，埃利藏多给柯克帕特里克发了一系列短信，暗示可能采取法律行动，并指责该科学家办公室与《纽约邮报》记者史蒂文·格林斯特里特串通，后者曾对前官员的不明飞行物声明进行批评性报道。"人们正在愤怒起来，"他写道，"如果这事传到国防部或国会，你的声誉将彻底毁掉。"

After Trump’s election, Elizondo took his message back to Washington. 
特朗普当选后，埃利佐多重返华盛顿传播他的信息。

“Advanced technologies not made by our government, or any other government, are monitoring sensitive military installations around the globe,” he told a congressional hearing in November. 
"非由我们政府或任何其他政府制造的先进技术正在监视全球敏感的军事设施，"他在 11 月的国会听证会上说。

In January, he got an audience with the incoming president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., who devoted an episode of his podcast to the topic of a government alien coverup. “It seems that there’s evidence of nonhuman intelligence out there engaging with our planet,” Trump posited.  
1 月，他与即将上任总统的儿子唐纳德·特朗普·小贾里会面，后者在自己的播客节目中专门讨论了政府对外星人的掩盖。"看起来有证据表明存在非人类智能在与我们的星球互动，"特朗普推测道。

Scenes from driving along the Extraterrestrial Highway.
行驶在外星高速公路上的景象。 Mikayla Whitmore for WSJ  MIKAYLA WHITMORE 为《华尔街日报》拍摄

“Your dad’s going to go down in history as being the one who actually brought truth and transparency to this topic,” Elizondo said. “Or they’re going to go ahead and stonewall him.”
埃利松多说："你父亲将在历史上以为这个话题带来真相和透明度而闻名。"或者"他们将继续阻挠他。"

Write to Joel Schectman at joel.schectman@wsj.com and Aruna Viswanatha at aruna.viswanatha@wsj.com
请致信 Joel Schectman，邮箱为 joel.schectman@wsj.com，以及 Aruna Viswanatha，邮箱为 aruna.viswanatha@wsj.com